


Pressed Against Your Anatomy

by fyredancer



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Crack, F/M, Humor, M/M, Slash if you squint, past Spock/Uhura - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-10
Updated: 2013-02-10
Packaged: 2017-11-28 21:00:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/678835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fyredancer/pseuds/fyredancer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Kirk learns the latest scuttlebutt, he realizes he doesn't know nearly enough about his first officer.  He sets out to ask everyone <i>but</i> the Vulcan in question.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pressed Against Your Anatomy

**Author's Note:**

> I feel dirty, but Kuwamiko said it was good. Merry Festivus, Gin! Also, the title is entirely inappropriate for the fic but I figured you'd enjoy it.

The scuttlebutt took half a duty shift to circulate and Kirk got wind of it after he left his bridge in the capable hands of his new first officer.

Kirk was glad he'd found out the latest gossip after he had left the bridge, so that he wouldn't be betrayed either by smirk or a contortion of involuntary horror. He prided himself on a good poker face, but some situations escaped his control, and Spock seemed to bring out the worst in him from day one.

"How do people find out these things?" Kirk burst out over his inadequate beaker of synthehol. He glared over at hapless Ensign MacTaggart as though the young man were personally responsible.

"What do you mean?" the young man said with a blink. "Rina told me, and she heard it straight from Uhura, so I think it's a pretty good source."

Kirk shook his head and gazed into the depths of his amber synthehol. Like nycotyne, it wasn't anywhere close to the real thing; it didn't satisfy the human craving for what was so bad for you, but it tickled the part of one's brain that desired it. "I mean, they were so cagey about being together in the first place, it took a life or death situation for anyone to find out."

Only he and Chekov had seen it, so Kirk knew _he_ was the one personally responsible for that scuttlebutt.

"I guess Uhura wanted to be sure the whole ship knew she wasn't fraternizing," MacTaggart said wisely.

"Huh," Kirk said. He swished his synthehol around as though it would provide him with answers. "You really think so?"

MacTaggart shrugged. "They both seem really protocol-bound, you know?"

Oh, Kirk knew. Considering that the first time he and Spock had met, the half-Vulcan had instigated a formal inquiry against him that could have resulted in being dismissed from Starfleet, or at least barred him from command assignments for a period of time. Kirk certainly knew that Spock was protocol-bound, and he'd been certain that Uhura was so tight-laced, her panties didn't even come off in the shower.

Not that he'd thought about Uhura. Or her panties. Or Spock _in_ her panties...

Kirk made a low noise in his throat. "Like I care if they're fraternizing or not," he said. He turned the beaker of synthehol around in his hands once, twice, then his eyes went wide. "Wait, Uhura's on the market."

MacTaggart grinned over at him. "Why do you think this news is spreading like sunspots over Venus's horizon?"

Kirk gave him a slow blink. Every down had an up, every push had a pull, every newton had an opposite force, and if Uhura was available, it meant that Spock was, too. "Nothing, I...huh." Sometimes, fake as it might be, Kirk could swear he lost brain function to synthehol. It was disappointing, because there was still a noticeable lack of buzz.

"You going to give it a try?" MacTaggart asked, waggling his brows in a manner surely meant as lewd but only coming across as comical.

"Me? Nah," Kirk replied. He swished his beaker to watch the amber swirl of the liquid within.

That had only been fun when he'd been in pursuit of someone whose panties never came off, so far as Kirk knew. Knowing that they did; moreover, that it was for someone like Spock, was kind of like finding out that his mom was still getting laid, or something. Imagining the press of those two regulation-fit bodies pressed against each other... Kirk shuddered and looked up, away from the counter and toward the simulated view of stars passing by the viewscreen.

The news had a sudden relevance for Kirk that he didn't even want to think about. "I have to go," he said abruptly, shoving aside his unfinished drink.

"What, really?" MacTaggart said, appearing surprised. Then he grinned. "Ah, I see – going to make your move, huh?"

"Going to sickbay," Kirk muttered.

"Oh, feel better," MacTaggart told him, and plucked up his own beaker, moving off to impart his news down the line.

"Not that kind of visit," Kirk said, but the ensign was already gone. If Uhura and Spock had broken up, then Kirk had less time than he'd thought.

~*~

"What?" Bones exclaimed, shaking his head and palming the side of his face. "No. I am not talking to you about that. We are not having this conversation."

It was hard to tell if Bones was truly aghast at him, or whether he was putting on the usual song and dance for any of Kirk's requests that ran moderately outside of the physician's well-defined comfort zone. Kirk had gotten so used to his friend's melodramatic overreactions that he didn't even care anymore.

"He must have had a physical in the last year," Kirk persisted. "We all have. You'd have access to that information."

Bones looked as though he'd zipped a lemon into his mouth and swallowed it sideways. He was really good at that, Kirk noted. He could probably win awards if they handed them out for dirty looks. "As a physician..."

"See? As a physician, you know these kinds of things!" Kirk interrupted. He leaned against the nearest biobed and when it gave an alarming chirp, he straightened at once and gave Bones his best conciliatory smile.

"As chief medical officer, I'm bound by the strictest confidentiality oaths," Bones finished. His dark brows slanted down to accent his disapproval.

Kirk folded his arms across his chest, widening his stance belligerently. "As captain, I'm entitled to know anything regarding the health of my crew members," he shot back.

"Should it affect the performance of their duties, yes," Bones shot back. "This has nothing to do with you in your official capacity and I'm not about to satisfy your prurience simply to add to the scuttlebutt circulating around Spock and Uhura's break-up."

Kirk sputtered. "How...how did _you_ find out about that?" he demanded. "I only found out ten minutes ago, then I came right here."

Bones's aggravated lines deepened. "I'm a doctor, Jim," he said. "People tell me things. I think it must be the medical degree that makes them assume I care."

Kirk snorted. "Right. Back to the point...or rather, the pointy-eared..."

"No," Bones said.

Kirk blinked at him. "What?" He was used to hearing it from Bones, but he was pretty sure it didn't mean what it was intended to. At least, not from McCoy. It meant he needed a bit more wearing down, or...

"No," Bones repeated, and it looked as though he relished saying the word. "And get used to hearing it if you ask about this again."

"But I need to know," Kirk said, aware that he was perilously close to a whine.

Bones managed to convey incredulity without raising a single brow. "You really don't," he said. "Which is why we're still having this conversation."

Kirk groaned, wondering how long it would take him to circumvent whatever standard-level encryption surrounded the medical database. It would have been so much easier if McCoy had been accommodating because, really, Kirk preferred the path of least resistance. "Fine, I'll take my prurience elsewhere," he said, unfolding his arms and doing a quick check of sick bay to see how many people might or might not have caught the exchange.

"And don't go thinking you can poke around the computer until you hijack my database," Bones added, accurately reading Kirk's shifty expression.

"Wh-whu...?" Kirk exclaimed, all offended innocence.

"I had Chekov take a look at the standard encryption and modify it so that if you tried to have your way with it, the whole thing would dump itself and cry like a baby," Bones said. If it were anyone but Bones, that harassed expression would be a triumphant smirk.

"Oh, god, why would you do that?" Kirk said, appalled.

"To Starfleet High Command," Bones added.

"You're no friend to me," Kirk said, or sulked, and began to stride for the exit.

"It's because I'm your friend that I'm doing this!" Bones called after him. "You'd better not bother Uhura with this nonsense, either!"

The thought hadn't occurred, but Kirk altered his planned trajectory. It would do.

~*~

"Why would you even ask me that?" Uhura said, her pretty face wrinkling in disdain.

"Because you're the only one besides his physician who knows, and the physician isn't telling?" Kirk offered. He kept his hands clasped behind his back and angled his body away from hers. Less invasive, he figured, and he was mirroring Uhura's upright posture.

"No, I mean...why do you want to know?" Uhura said bluntly.

Kirk's challenging smirk fell away. That was subject matter he didn't want to touch with a ten-meter maintenance servo.

"I have my reasons," he said evasively. "Captain reasons."

"Really," Uhura said, her expression more bland than the Neutral Zone.

"Yes," Kirk insisted. Technically it had to do with the captaincy, because he was the captain and it affected him, and Kirk was strangely okay with his completely circular logic.

"I suggest you look it up," Uhura said. "The standard biology texts should have what you need."

"Come on, you know as well as I do that Spock was a test tube baby," Kirk complained. He was pretty sure the known civilized universe was conversant with that fact.

Uhura gazed steadily at him for a moment, and the fact that she wasn't shutting him down right away gave rise to hope. "You should ask him," she said at last, then her mouth quirked. "Actually, can I be there when you ask him? I'd like to see that."

"Ugh, no," Kirk replied. "That would be between him and me."

"Funny," Uhura said, her gaze still level. "Because that's the way I look at it."

"Forget I ever asked," Kirk said, then because he didn't want this conversation joining the scuttlebutt, too, he added, "That's an order."

Uhura saluted so smartly, Kirk knew he was being mocked.

~*~

"Please tell me that you did not just ask me that," Sulu stated, more than asked, as he slid his beaker of synthehol away with a queasy expression.

"Come on, why does everyone act like I killed their Denebian mud-puppy when I ask that question?" Kirk exclaimed, casting his hands up.

Sulu's jaw worked and he cast a sidewise glare at Kirk, but he said nothing.

"You work out in the fitness center a lot during mid-watch hours, after duty," Kirk said, doing his best to be encouraging without coming across as creepy.

"So?" Sulu said defensively. "It's my time off shift, I can do what I like."

"So, Spock works out at around the same time, often," Kirk pressed. "You must have seen..."

Sulu swallowed hard, turned his body completely away, and clenched his beaker in white-knuckled hands so hard it was a good thing the material was shatter-proof. "I'm not comfortable with the turn this conversation has taken, sir."

"Oh, knock off the sir," Kirk said genially. "You can call me Jim. We're both off-duty, after all."

Sulu looked at him, then back to his drink, which was a fruity concoction of something or other that had a fake umbrella skewering a few hapless pieces of replicated fruit. "Well, in that case, Jim," he began.

Kirk grinned. He was about to get his curiosity satisfied, at last.

"...I definitely don't have anything to say," he concluded. "I never saw anything, and so far as I'm concerned, he was never there. And we most definitely did not use the sauna together."

Kirk deflated. "You know, Sulu," he began in a reflective tone.

Sulu regarded him with wary appraisal from the corner of his eye.

"You're a good man to have at my back in the middle of a fight," Kirk continued. "But you are absolutely no fun out of uniform. You need to work on that." He got up off the barstool, clapping a startled Sulu on the shoulder in passing.

"I'll take it under advisement," Sulu mumbled into his glass. "Jim."

Kirk cocked a finger at Sulu and fired, imitating an old-fashioned phaser discharge, and went on his merry way. He was running out of people to consult with on a very short list.

~*~

It was the end of swing shift by the time Kirk returned to his quarters after a very unsatisfying consultation with one Ensign Pavel Andreievich Chekov. It had taken most of the conversation for Kirk to get across what he'd wanted, and Kirk wasn't sure if it was because Chekov was dense in the way that geniuses often could be, if it was the language barrier – unlikely, given above point re: genius – or if Chekov had been colluding with Bones to confound him at every turn. Kirk wouldn't have been surprised whatsoever to discover conclusive evidence that it was the last option. McCoy really liked to deny Kirk from getting his way, especially when it was something in the good doctor's opinion that he really shouldn't have.

Chekov's face had brightened when Kirk confirmed that it was camera feeds he wanted, camera feeds from monitoring stations that would be in a position to give Kirk the information he was after. Then Chekov had promptly informed Kirk that, no, those feeds were promptly scrubbed and the computer was set to 'look but not see,' essentially – the feed was monitored for any distress variations, but none of the data was retained in long term memory. So there were no stored visuals.

The universe was out to get him, Kirk concluded, and took himself back to his quarters with a disconsolate step. The most unthinkable of options had occurred – asking the very source of his curiosity – but that was out of the question as far as Kirk was concerned. The last thing he wanted to do was strain the already threadbare relationship between he and Spock.

Kirk sighed and cast about for his comfortable cable-knit sweater that he preferred to kick about in when he was alone in his quarters. As the lights came on, he reared back from the sight of a tall figure at parade rest, severe black hair capping a sleek, pointy-eared head.

"What the—Spock!" Kirk complained loudly, looking around his dim quarters and expecting a security detail, or something equally grave. He realized, finding them alone, what must have happened for Spock to have gotten himself into Kirk's quarters before him. "I didn't think you'd use your rank access codes to invade my privacy like this."

"Are you not invading mine in a similar manner?" Spock inquired directly, one up-slanted dark brow rising.

"I'm not sure I know what you're talking about," Kirk hedged. Technically it was true. Spock could be referring to any number of invasions of privacy that Kirk had committed in the past half-year of their acquaintance.

Spock made a low noise in his throat. "It's no use denying it, Captain. Uhura has already--"

"I told Uhura not to say!" Kirk exclaimed.

"No, you told her to forget you ever asked," Spock murmured, stepping closer. "Which is not the same, at all, as being told to forget the conversation or not to share it."

Kirk groaned and made a pass through his hair. "Women," was all he could say to that. Always so good at finding loopholes. He looked down at the floor, at the simulated view above his bed in the corner, at the archway that led to his sonic shower; anything to avoid meeting Spock's accusing gaze.

"Captain," Spock said in very clipped, controlled tones. "If you have something to ask and it's regarding me, I'd prefer you ask _me_ rather than going the roundabout method. The crew _will_ talk."

"And you don't want them in your business; yeah, I get that," Kirk said, even though he was essentially the reason anyone would have been in Spock's business to begin with. Truly, it had only been because he didn't care about the stupid fraternization protocols to begin with that he'd ever said anything about their relationship. "Don't worry about it, Spock; I've got nothing to ask you."

Spock's brow creased. "Captain, you were asking Uhura about my..."

"Nothing to ask!" Kirk yelped hastily. He sighed, then added, "If we're going to be having any kind of conversation like this when neither of us are drunk, you may as well call me Jim." He heard an echo of his name in someone else's voice, spoken gently with great affection, and had to repress a shudder. The last thing he needed right that moment was to recall the older Spock, and everything that had been revealed to him. _Everything_ , at the touch of those weathered fingers, and yet when it came to certain details, not nearly enough.

Hence Kirk's curiosity.

"Very well, _Jim_ ," Spock said with such repressed Vulcan fury that Jim was surprised his hair didn't ignite. The last time he'd seen Spock so studiedly not-angry, he'd been ejected out of a pod and sent spinning toward an icebound outpost. "Why are you asking questions of Uhura and others about my anatomy?"

"Oh, you heard about the others?" Kirk said weakly. He gripped the back of the nearest chair to steady himself, wishing he could sink onto it but Spock was standing therefore Kirk had to remain thus, too. It was a man thing. Or considering Spock, simply a dominance thing. "I...you know what? I don't have a good reason, not at all. You'd better go. Long shift, I'm sure, so..."

"Jim," Spock pressed, dark eyes boring into his. "Whatever caused this line of inquiry, I assure you I'm mature enough to handle it directly. Even if you are not." A brow quirked up in silent challenge.

Kirk laughed incredulously. "All right, you brought this on yourself," he said, and paused in reflection. "Literally."

Still at parade rest, Spock managed to look tranquilly inquiring.

"Older Spock mind-melded with me," Kirk said, and paused again. "I saw...things. A whole life, really. Someone else's life, and...there was a lot of...me." He shook his head, unable to piece it together in a fashion any less disjointed.

Spock frowned.

"We have a relationship," Kirk began, and shook his head. That didn't quite encompass all of the nuances. "They. The other Kirk and Spock, _they_ have a relationship. All we have is..." He trailed off, unable to finish the sentence. Because of Nero, his entire life had been wrenched asunder, blown off course. He'd been born on an escape shuttle. His father had never seen him graduate, or be commissioned. What if all he was, what if his existence in this reality, was only some warped reflection of what might have been?

"Of course we have a relationship," Spock said at once, then the space between his brows furrowed. "Oh. I see. You mean..."

"It's nothing," Kirk said, waving his hand. "It's a might have been, the next closest thing to never was. I was curious, that's...that's all." Curious enough to compromise his working relationship with his first officer, apparently.

"You could have asked me," Spock said, cool as a Vulcan cucumber.

Kirk shook his head. "I don't have any kind of good reason for getting a secure channel to older Spock to ask him something like that," he replied.

"Not my older self," Spock persisted, low but confident. "Me. You simply could have asked me."

Kirk took in a sharp breath; let it out slowly. "You'd answer that kind of question?"

Spock was no longer standing strictly at parade rest. His hands were loose at his sides and his posture had changed somehow, going from that degree of rigid to a more casual increment of perfect alignment. "It is, as they say, something to which you shall not know the answer until you ask."

Kirk nodded, plucked up all his rakish courage, wished all his shots of synthehol had been real scotch, and blurted, "Spock, what does your penis look like?" He cut himself off before he could continue, _Is it really weird? Is it like an alien flower? Is it like Cthulhu's beard? Is it like a Cardassian spike wand?_ because that would be embarrassing.

Without a single shift in expression, Spock replied, "I believe you'd have to buy me several drinks before I'd entertain the question seriously. Real drinks, not synthehol."

Kirk stared. He said, wonderingly, "Spock."

"And even then," Spock continued, expression forbidding, "it would be under negotiation. I am not easy, Jim; nor am I a 'sure thing.'"

The sole functions that Kirk could manage were blinking and respiration.

"So long as that's clear," Spock said with a regal nod. He began to move at last, making a swift track for the door. "Jim."

"Spock," Kirk croaked by way of farewell.

Long after the hiss of doors irising shut had faded, Kirk finally sank into his chair with a stupid grin on his face. He was pretty sure that young Spock, this Spock, _his_ Spock, had just challenged Kirk to get into his pants.

And, by the naughty nebulae, did Kirk ever love a challenge.

He was still concerned about the possibility of alien peen, though. Mind-melds either gave way too much info dump...or not nearly enough.

Kirk was pretty sure he could have lived the rest of his alternate-universe life without seeing his own come face.


End file.
